Sunday, 10 May 2015

Hello there. If you're wondering what 'fourth wave feminism' is, then don't worry. It's a term I suddenly thought of when pondering the history of GamerGate. I then Googled the term, and it seems as if there are instances of actual usage of such a term as far back as 2005. As most will know, third wave feminism had relatively little in the way of things to protest again, as today, sexism and misogyny has largely been swept away. Indeed, actual examples of sexism and misogyny are genuinely hard to come by these days, which should lead one to imagine that feminism has achieved its goals in the liberation of women from oppression in the west, and that the time has come to focus on helping women in countries where sexist and misogynistic attitudes still reign supreme. Yet, far from declaring victory, modern feminists are still adamant that women are being oppressed by "the patriarchy." Whilst radical fruitcakes have existed in feminism as a whole before now, it seems as if such individuals are now a much larger portion of feminism. Indeed, as time has gone on, and the genuine victories of feminism have increased, the proportion of feminists that are complete nutcases seems to have increased.In the past couple of years, the number of radical feminists seems to have exploded, flinging their feculence across the Internet into people's faces like a stream of sewage coming unbidden into one's home. They have taken it upon themselves to find problems where none exist and force their viewpoint down the throats of others, infiltrating and inserting themselves wherever possible. Yet, despite claiming to be oppressed by an imaginary "patriarchy" various politically correct media outlets and their social justice warrior followers have blindly followed the radical feminists in their cause, and have thus opted to construct a sluice to let more of the sewage into society. The most obvious incident is the whole GamerGate saga. As a recent convert to the GamerGate movement, I thought I'd put my two history degrees to use by chronicling the rise of this new, obnoxious form of feminism.We shall start with an incident prior to GamerGate, a similar scandal that rocked another community. An incident known colloquially as elevator gate. To give this event its proper context, it should be first prudent to give the history of the community in which this incident took place: the new atheist community. New Atheism is a term used to refer to a recent movement of atheists, sceptics, et al. who argue that not only is religion wrong, but is evil and needs to be opposed. This movement began with prominent atheist buffoons such as Richard Dawkins publishing books extremely hostile towards religion such as the God Delusion. It is a movement that primarily attracted angsty teenager, 'tweenagers' and similar types. This movement drew upon the philosophical and historical illiteracy of its adherents, but was mostly a reaction to the scientific illiteracy of Young Earth Creationism, and fundamentalism in general. It was also a reaction to the 9/11 attacks carried out by Islamic extremists. Whilst some legitimate criticisms of organised religion were there, they were mostly eclipsed by bile spewing. At its height, it was a movement that had a lot of traction in atheist and unbelieving circles before fizzling out more recently. These movements spawned multiple conferences, with many prominent speakers within the new atheist community. At one of these, feminist sceptic Rebecca Watson made a video criticising what she felt as 'creepy' behaviour on the part of an individual who wanted to discuss her ideas because the individual did so in an elevator.This drew the ire of new atheist 'high priest' Richard Dawkins, which immediately exploded into an online spat between new atheist "loyalists" and various feminists. This also drew the ire of new atheism's unofficial YouTube spokesperson Phil Mason, aka Thunderf00t, and similar YouTubers, such as 'TheAmazingAtheist.' This is where we first really saw this new kind of toxic feminism. The resulting "explosion" caused a divide in the new atheist community. Those siding with the feminists created a short-lived movement 'Atheism+', whose members included professional whiner and producer of festering offal, P Z Myers, and the historical revisionist pathological liar, Richard Carrier. Essentially, they tried to hijack the new atheist movement in order to spread their feminist ideals. Eventually, the whole new atheist movement disintegrated, in part because of the divide, but also because more people were beginning to realise that this anti-religious sentiment was no different to the fundamentalism these people claimed to oppose.
Thunderf00t in his heyday was involved in numerous online spats with various members of YouTube's disparate collection of religious communities, and, with the whole elevatorgate incident, switched from primarily attacking religion, to focusing on the attempts of feminists to hijack atheism. Thunderf00ts change of subject area is what initially led me to discover this new wave of toxic feminism, as his critiques included critical reviews of various new and upcoming feminists. His videos cover feminists activities in between elevatorgate and gamergate. Thus, the elevatorgate incident coincided with a rise in awareness of a new form of feminism, and an increase in its activities. In fact, Thunderf00t and TheAmazingAtheist are perhaps responsible for bringing this new feminism to the attention of the religious and atheist communities on YouTube, with videos on the subject from commentators such as MrRepzion and AlphaOmegaSin.Various of these new feminists and their activities are what led to the incident now known as GamerGate, which I have already chronicled separately. The chief incident is the whole Zoe post saga, where Eron Gjoni published the shady activities of his ex-girlfriend, game developer Zoe Quinn, who had engaged in numerous sexual affairs with video game journalists in exchange for positive reviews and support of her patreon account. This blatant media corruption sparked the ire of video gamers reliant on video game journalism. This coincided with the activities of Anita Sarkeesian, a demonstrable fraud, liar and con-artist, and Brianna Wu, who was also implicated in some corrupt dealings. The ire of gamers was brought to bear, but was easily painted as harassment due to the involvement of various third party trolls sending hate mail and death threats, and doxxing individuals. The hate mail on Twitter was sent via brand new 'egg accounts' and similar. As with elevatorgate, the radical feminists swarmed in droves, but this time, they were backed by various media outlets, as well as the unwashed hordes of social justice warriors. The media outlets implicated in corruption obviously needed to cover up their shady dealings and used their influence to tailor reporting on Gamergate in their favour. The feminist/SJW line was represented as fact and repeated uncritically by other, more mainstream media, with the volume of social justice warriors repeating the claims mindlessly seemingly giving the obviously false narrative legitimacy. Social justice warriors are a special kind of online idiot. They have always existed, and have largely consisted of radical feminists, and a whole slew of insane, angsty teenagers, etc. For example, otherkin are people who legitimately believe themselves to be non-human animals trapped in the bodies of humans. Social justice warriors and their feminist allies are responsible for the attempt to redefine terms such as racism and sexism. They are responsible for all kinds of meaningless, bullshit terminology, such as 'truscum' 'cis' and 'genderqueer' amongst other examples. For example, there are SJWs who have invented new pronouns for themselves and become enraged when people do not use them. They mouth meaningless soundbites such as "check your privilege." These idiots are closely related to the rise of fourth wave feminism and speaks of a larger problem: the problem that the Internet is diametrically opposed to quality control, and the problem that the majority of people these days are functionally illiterate. This is a problem noted by author Mark Bauerlein in his book The Dumbest Generation.Despite the explosion of information available via the Internet, people are still as clueless now as they were a century ago, if not more. Comedian Stewart Lee laments whether Johannes Gutenberg could ever foreseen the nightmare scenario where every person in Britain would own a copy of Russell Brand's 'My Bookie Wook,' or if William Tyndale was burnt as the stake for the cause of English vernacular literature so that people could read The Gospel According to Chris Moyles? This is why we see hack historians like Richard Carrier, and philosophically illiterate buffoons such as Lawrence Krauss claiming that Jesus did not exist as a historical person. This is why we see authoritarian conservatives trying to regulate marriage and promoting war in the middle east. This is why we see authoritarian liberals advocating economically suicidal policies and strict controls on what people can own, and eat, etc. This is why impressionable idiots are touting ideologies such as communism and socialism. This is why we see radical feminists, SJWs and other special snowflakes spouting all manner of nonsense.This fourth wave feminism, then, is largely an extension of the larger problem of stupidity in society and the conflict it creates. However, with GamerGate, we can see a concerted effort on those unwilling to put with such vapid, supercilious, preening twits. More people are coming to the realisation that such adopting radical viewpoints and the polarisation of opposing viewpoints is wrong. GamerGate is now a movement of many different types of people. The dawn of GamerGate coincided with the rise of a number of critics all of differing backgrounds. YouTubers SargonOfAkkad, MundaneMatt and Shoe0nhead, Twitter shitposter extraordinaire Chobitcoin/Airport, feminist scholar Christina Hoff Summers, actor Adam Baldwin, adult film actress Mercedes Carrera, renowned YouTube game critic John Bain aka TotalBiscuit, journalist Milo Yiannopoulos aka Nero, and has received support from the likes of Jim Sterling and Ben 'Yahtzee' Croshaw of Zero Punctuation. Those involved in GamerGate are banding together to promote free speech, the exchange and debate of different ideas and true equality.So, who are the fourth wave feminists? Aside from con artist Anita Sarkeesian, and professional victims Zoe Quinn, and Brianna Wu, we have Arthur Chu, a man whose claim to fame is being on Jeopardy, Chris Kluwe, a former athlete who thinks being patronising and making racist jokes is a good substitute for argument, Suey Park, a woman who tried to get Steven Colbert's show cancelled for making jokes she didn't like, Melody Hensley, a woman who claimed that Twitter gave her PTSD, Jessica Valenti, a Guardanista who thinks wearing t-shirts saying "<i>I drink male tears</i> is acceptable, Laurie Penny, a woman who thinks it is okay to deface war memorials, and a whole slew of similar people, all of whom from well-off, privileged backgrounds and in positions of relative power in society. Despite claiming oppression at the hand of the "patriarchy" and defining sexism as discrimination + power, they themselves are in positions of power and use their influence to try and oppress those who do not share this view. Nowhere is this more evident when they try and shout down women who do not subscribe to their insane views. For example, feminists and SJWs bullied Kaley Cuoco into apologising for the simple crime of saying she liked cooking for her husband and didn't need feminism.They are even willing to turn on their own, as evidenced when Joss Whedon received substantial amounts of abuse from radical feminists on Twitter for his handling of the character Black Widow in Avengers: Age of Ultron. Much like the Twilight Zone episode <i>the Obsolete Man</i> where the government official presiding over the sentencing of a librarian to death is himself sentenced to death as he is deemed by the state to have outlived his usefulness. Although in an apparent display of cognitive dissonance and Stockholm Syndrome, Whedon has claimed radical feminists weren't responsible for ousting him from Twitter, even going so far as to post a picture of him posing with Anita Sarkeesian herself. This is the goal of fourth wave feminists and those like them: total conformity and the stifling of different ideas and viewpoints. They also subscribe to the idea that certain ideas cannot be criticised or challenged. They construe everything in terms of collective, homogenised identities. Everybody is clearly identifiable as belonging to a certain, specific group. Groupthink, and conformity is valued above critical thinking and individualism.Fourth wave feminism is a toxic ideology, however, one that is increasingly being challenged. I've been Rational Gaze and, in many ways, I still am. See you later shitlords! For those wishing to submit hate mail, please fill out the following form and submit it in hand-written triplicate: